Simplist

Part of speech: adjective

Definitions

1. A person who believes in or promotes the reduction of complexity in ideas, systems, or designs to their most essential elements
2. Someone who favors straightforward, uncomplicated approaches and argues for stripping away unnecessary details or complications
3. An advocate for simplification who seeks to make things easier to understand or use by removing needless complication

Etymology: "Simplist" is a plain formation: the adjective "simple" with the suffix "-ist" added, which marks a person who holds, practises or favours something. A simplist, then, is someone who advocates simplicity, especially in explaining or solving problems, and the word follows the same pattern as "realist" or "modernist" built from familiar stems. The suffix does most of the work here. "-ist" came into English through Latin "-ista" and Greek "-istēs", and it attaches readily to nouns and adjectives to name a practitioner or a believer in a doctrine. "Simple" itself arrived from Old French and ultimately from Latin "simplex", meaning "single" or "uncompounded", so the word's core sense is one of plainness rather than stupidity.